Nonfiction review: 'Happy'

An aneurysm cut short Alex Lemon's baseball career.A freshman and star catcher on the Macalester College baseball team, Alex Lemon was on the top of his world.

He had occasional dizzy spells, though: His vision would blur, and he'd topple over on his bed or in the shower. There was a temptation to blame it on the alcohol and drugs -- plentiful in his circle -- but there also was a part of him that didn't want to tell anybody for fear of making it more real.

But on the diamond, the ball disappeared in flight; he couldn't catch pitches anymore. An MRI revealed the truth: At the age of 19, Lemon had a brain hemorrhage -- an aneurysm, a kind of stroke -- that was growing in the neighborhood of his brain stem, what one neurosurgeon called "some very pricey real estate."

Caught between the rock of a delicate brain surgery that could kill or damage more than it cured, and the hard place of an awful past (he recovers a terrible childhood trauma), Lemon spiraled into a cycle of drinking, drugs, cheating on a series of what sound like lovely girlfriends, even self-mutilation, a painful process he describes in his new memoir "Happy."

These sections get tiresome, if you're no longer young and/or you've read such accounts before. Lemon and his friends come off like punk Hemingways (in terms of their spiky attitudes, not so much the prose style), but it's part of the journey he and the reader have to make.

One turns from the debauchery and macho competitiveness to the medical tests and hospital stays with relief. Objective reality (or Lemon's keen eye) repeatedly kicks in with wonderful metaphors and analogies.

For example, a cassette player falls in a lake and plays underwater for a while before shutting down. A little girl hands him her collection of perfect seashells on the beach in Miami while he waits for his surgery. Hurricane Floyd sweeps in from the Caribbean on the eve of his operation and closes the hospital!

More than anything, "Happy" (a nickname bestowed on Lemon by his friends) is a tribute to his mother, which would be another cliché were it not for her marvelous eccentricity.

Something of a nomad and a hoarder -- she has the excuse of her artwork -- "Ma" leaves multiple messages on his voicemail, sometimes consisting of appropriate music, sometimes singing herself. She seems pretty goofy much of the time, but she can always sense when something's really wrong with her son, and when swift and decisive action is called for she is laser-sharp.

Most of the story takes place at Macalester in St. Paul, Minn., with side trips to the Mayo Clinic and Miami. But there are several passing references to Portland: Lemon's college girlfriend is from here (I'm still trying to figure out where her parents' house would be, to have a view of Portland, Hillsboro, Beaverton, Lake Oswego and Vancouver). Lemon visits one summer and works at Gold's Gym, flirting with the older women there.